Ben C Smith

Hi, Gerard.

Most of what you wrote I agree with, at least to a point. What you wrote above is crucial to my point on this thread. You are asserting that no evidence has been brought forward that has strengthened historicity, and are challenging me to produce that kind of evidence. All I can say is: Bravo!

That is what I am talking about here. You are (according to your statement) willing to argue the case on the merits of each point. The statement with which I was disagreeing looked like it wanted to make the whole Jesus story stand in its entirety or not at all. I reject that approach, and it looks like you do too.

Thanks for the response.

Ben.

(BTW, I do not intend to take you up on your challenge at this time. I am on record as wishing that mythicism had a slightly wider hearing than it does at present so as to bring out the best in historicist scholarship. I am presently working on a detailed argument for the historicity of Jesus that does not in any way start with the presumption that he existed, but it may be many moons before that is ready.)

mountainman

Science is definitely grey.

In regard to this "SHADE OF GREY" and the notion
of the meaning of historicity, I have started another
thread in order to attempt to understand whether or
not this thing everyone is calling "historicity" may be
reduced to a simple percentage value.

I have attempted to explain myself there.
Best wishes,



Pete

GakuseiDon

I think this would be an interesting line of enquiry. You write that "we have observed lots of myths and legends of which we know that there was no historical person at the root". One example you gave is Hercules (though AFAIK, Hercules was considered as historical by ancient Romans).

Can you give examples of figures comparable to Jesus, but whom we know were not historical? Most that I can think of -- Apollonius of Tyana, Vespasian (healed a sick man, star showed him to be the Messiah), Honi the Circle Drawer -- are thought to have a historical person at their root.

gstafleu

This "comparable to Jesus" bit might be troublesome, if only because there will always be differences with Jesus, which could then be used to discount the example in question.

But let me try some. Achilles. He has a book written about him (possibly by more than one author according to some "H-Homer" theories), but he is generally agreed to be fictional. Same with Odysseus.

Icarus, Atlas, many others from the Greek mythology.

Then we have the whole Norse mythology, full of fictional characters.

How about Merlin?

Going by Robert Price's "Of Myth and Man" article, Buddha also qualifies.

I would say there is a wide range of myth with generally agreed fictional characters, some more some less like the Jesus character. I don't think we disagree about the existence of myth with fictional characters. The question, I think, is: why do you thing the Jesus story does not fall under that category?

Gerard Stafleu

copernicus

That sounds very interesting, Ben, and I hope that we can one day collect on the promissory note. The problem I see is that there might have been a real person whose life (or death) ultimately resulted in the gospels being written, but almost all of the information about that person contained in the gospels could be false. For example, maybe the real Jesus was a woman who had been threatened with stoning but escaped the mob. Somehow it all got twisted around so that history recorded her as a man who was crucified. Historicity of that sort would not be very interesting, since the gospels would still be a false depiction of that man's (or woman's) life. The historicity of the story elements involving the person is what seems to be of real interest, not the existence of a person that became encrusted with myths. The more you pare Jesus down, the less it matters whether there was a historical Jesus. You end up with the answer: "Yes, Jesus existed. But not the one you were talking about."

GakuseiDon

I agree, but in order to do some kind of analysis, some kind of comparison needs to be drawn.

The criteria you gave was "historical person at the root". How would you show that there was no historical Merlin at the root of the stories?

I think Jesus does, and that's strong evidence for historicity, once the category is defined. I would guess that the overwhelming majority of characters written about within a hundred years after the character was thought to have lived, are actually thought to be historical.

neilgodfrey

Caveat: I have not read every post in this thread. So at the risk of going over old ground .....

To address your question I'd need to be thinking of specific cases where this is indeed the case. Do you have specific illustrations of this point in mind?

It also appears from the earlier posts that you are thinking of "evidence" as if all that is called "evidence" (archaeological inscriptions and coins, writings a generation later...) is of equal value. It is integral to any historian's job to evaluate everything that is presented as 'evidence' and consider its authorship, provenance, date, genre, political and social contexts, and so forth.

It may well be that a document that one culture treats as a historical verification another culture regards as a childish fiction. I am by no means a post-modernist but one does not have to be a post-modernist to appreciate the significance of first establishing genre, purpose, authorship, etc etc before drawing concrete conclusions from a document. If there are sound grounds for treating any document as fictional then one cannot simply default to treating that document as "historical evidence" of what is plausibly its most fictional contents.

Historians familiar with the questions of modern history are often gob-smacked to see the near total naivety with which so many "biblical scholars" treat the scant sources of the questions of ancient "biblical-related" history.


Neil Godfrey
http://vridar.wordpress.com

Ben C Smith

I gave Alexander of Macedonia as an example. I do not think we have to accept either the full-blown legend (which was developing nicely within his own lifetime) or an historical figment. I think we can pare away the legend and arrive at an historical core.

It is quite probable that, in the case of Alexander, this historical core will be more robust than the historical core of a Galilean peasant, but hypothetically the process is possible in both cases. The statement to which I was responding seemed to imply that, in the case of Jesus, it was the full-blown legend or bust, right from the get-go.

I am not sure what in my writing gave that appearance, but if I ever implied as much it was by accident. I certainly regard some kinds of evidence as better evidence than other kinds.

Then it appears you agree with my point that we have to go at it piece by piece, not with some all-or-nothing schema in mind.

I absolutely agree (with the proviso that fiction can also be historical evidence, though of course often in a much different way than self-conscious history).

Granted, the problem with modern history is too many sources while the problem with ancient history is not enough, but could you provide an example or two of modern historians who are just flabbergasted at how biblical scholars treat their sources?

Thanks.

Ben.

Clivedurdle

Merlin probably has a testable historical core!

GakuseiDon

Yep. And if gstafleu wants to claim that Merlin and Jesus are in the same "category", and Merlin turns out to have a historical core, gstafleu should only be able to conclude that this adds credibility towards the historicity of Jesus.